


lay up the boards

by dustofwarfare



Series: begin the end [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 12:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12457497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: Sephiroth finds him on the floor of what used to be his house, sitting with his back against the wall where he’d mentioned the growth chart used to be.  “You never do stay away when I want you to.”“Then you shouldn’t be surprised,” says Sephiroth.___Sephiroth and Cloud go back to Nibelheim.





	lay up the boards

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the Begin the End verse. Title from "Comin' home" by Murder by Death, my most favorite band in the world <3

Nibelheim doesn’t look destroyed as much as simply abandoned.

The Shinra actors hired to play townspeople left prior to Meteorfall – either on orders from Shinra or of their own volition – and without an operable mako reactor, there really wasn’t a reason for anyone to return to the little mountain town.

“Kind of surreal, isn’t it,” says Cloud. “Being back.”

Sephiroth nods, but doesn’t say anything. Cloud’s spoken barely two words to him over the last few hours, including the world’s most awkward airship ride in which Cid Highwind didn’t hold back when it came to telling Sephiroth exactly what he thought of him.

Sephiroth is used to that – Cloud’s friends tolerate him, for the most part, but they’re certainly not shy about sharing their opinion of him. It doesn’t much bother Sephiroth, who was raised since childhood to treat other people as either inconsequential, potentially but only circumstantially useful, or as a threat. Sephiroth thinks that it bothers Cloud more than he admits, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

The past is what it is, hateful and messy and tragic though it may be.

And now they are standing together at the entrance to the town where it all started.

Again.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Cloud says abruptly.

Sephiroth stands in front of the rusted gate and watches Cloud walk away.

He enters the town alone, expecting the wind to feel like fire, the air to taste like ash.

All he feels is cold.

***

Cloud finds him in the general store an hour later, examining a collapsed roof. It snows a fair bit in Nibelheim, and without regular maintenance, the weight of the snow and the water damage has taken an obvious toll.

“They built it all too fast,” Cloud says, hands shoved in his coat. He tilts his head, squinting up at the collapsed roof. “After the fire.”

Sephiroth pushes a beam off what was used to be the counter. Behind it, there’s a mess of broken glass but nothing of any real value. Even if no one was living here, it didn’t mean travelers hadn’t ravaged the stores for anything useful.

Cloud shifts through some of the wreckage and comes out with a potion that has somehow escaped both the wreckage and the scavenging. He holds it up, rubs at the dust with the sleeve of his coat. “It’s been a long time since I’ve needed one of these.” He doesn’t smile. “God, they tasted awful. Not as bad as a Hyper, but Shiva, these were gross. Glad I don’t need them anymore.”  

Materia was harder to come by nowadays, but both of them had a small supply, most restorative in nature. They were both wearing armlets with mastered cure and barrier materia, since the wildlife around the deserted town wasn’t all friendly. Except for the ever-present zolems, monsters mostly stayed away from Midgar and Kalm. Out here, in the wild, was a different story.

Over the last few months Sephiroth has spent some time thinking through his memories of his descent into madness. The hardest details to recall were those surrounding his last battle with Cloud, which was – at least as far as he’d been able to understand – because it had been less his actual, physical self and more a manifestation of his will.

_All you are is an empty puppet._

It’s different when it comes to memories of Nibelheim; when he was more Shinra’s instrument than Jenova’s.

( _Jenova_. Her name echoes in his head, all her whispered promises that turned out to be nothing but emptiness and hate to burn him from the inside up. Sometimes he can still hear her, buried deep in the silence.)

“Hey.” Cloud glances at him, wary and on-edge. He looks nothing like the wide-eyed young trooper who got sick on the way there, hiding behind his helmet and too shy to say much to the man he’d considered an idol.

It’s as good a reminder as any that things have changed, and they are, neither of them, the people they once were.

Sephiroth is beginning to lose count of how many people he’s been. He thinks that, if anything, Cloud can understand that where no one else can.

***

“This was my house,” says Cloud, without inflection, in the next building. “Or it was. Before.” He sounds disinterested but Sephiroth can see the tension he’s carrying in the set of his shoulders, the clench of his jaw. He nods over toward a far wall. “There used to be a little chart there where my mom made marks about how tall I was. You know. Like kids have.”

Sephiroth’s had been in a file, not on a wall.

“And there was this – this part of the wall behind the stove that was blackened and would never come clean. My mom used to say that was the one time my dad tried to cook her dinner.” Cloud smiles but it’s fleeting, brief. “I guess I inherited his skills in the kitchen.”

That’s certainly true. If it weren’t for Sephiroth, they’d have the same sort of charred spot in their own kitchen back in Kalm. Or they wouldn’t have a kitchen at all. The gas stove had not been friendly to Cloud’s few culinary attempts.

“And there was a loft, here,” he says, pointing above. “That’s where I slept. One time I broke my arm because I fell down the ladder. It wasn’t even that tall of a loft. Being short sucks.”

Sephiroth stays quiet, aware that this speech is entirely for Cloud’s benefit, not his. He tries to imagine what Cloud looked like as a child, some little thing with big blue eyes and fluffy hair.

Sephiroth took away those marks on the wall, that loft with its dangerous ladder. Cloud’s childhood was burned to ash thanks to Sephiroth’s bottomless rage, covered over by a company’s desperation to maintain a façade at all costs.

Outside, the wind howls.

“I didn’t think –” Cloud shakes his head, once, and changes his mind about whatever it was he was going to say. “Let’s go.”

Sephiroth follows him out of the house, the two of them silent as ghosts.

***

Tifa’s house is the most damaged of all the buildings. It’s the largest and was just as quickly re-built as the rest, so there was more roof to cave in, more wood to rot. The house is too much of a mess to go upstairs.

The inn sustained the least amount of damage, at least structurally. Inside, the pipes have all burst without mako to keep them warm; the whole inn smells moldy and the bedding is sodden and damp. But the walls at least seem sturdier, and the roof hasn’t collapsed like the others.

“If Rufus wants people to move here, they’ll probably have to tear the buildings down and rebuild them. Again. Only this time do it right.”

They’re standing in the hallway next to a window. Sephiroth has the vivid memory of standing in this same place and speaking to Zack, before he shut himself up in the Shinra mansion.

“I don’t think we were ready for this,” says Cloud, flatly. His eyes are unfriendly and cold, and while there’s no real hostility there, it makes Sephiroth think of Cloud as he was in the beginning, back at Healin, before Sephiroth’s memories returned. “I don’t think we could ever be ready for this.”

“Nevertheless,” Sephiroth says. “Here we are.”

The first time he was here, he remembered thinking the landscape looked familiar as he gazed out of the window. Now he knows it does, and why, and for a moment wishes that he didn’t.

But there is no point in pretending that he is not the reason this town is in ruin, that he did not put those shadows in Cloud’s eyes. So he doesn’t try.

***

They eat dinner in the inn, using fire materia to heat a pot of water in an old cooking cauldron. Cloud seems unwilling to sleep inside even though it’s cold out, so they make camp outside near the ruins of the Shinra mansion.

Sephiroth finds stones to use to keep a fire contained, and he’s certain they both make note of the irony even if they don’t mention it.

Cloud hasn’t said anything other than the necessities since that moment in the inn, and even his one-worded answers to simple logistical questions have morphed into nods or a shake of his head. They sit next to each other on bedrolls, though they might as well be a thousand miles apart.

Abruptly, Cloud stands up and sends an ice spell to douse the fire. He looks at Sephiroth with a look so hateful that Sephiroth almost looks away. Instead, he holds Cloud’s gaze steadily and watches as Cloud grabs his bedroll and marches off somewhere in the dark.

“Don’t follow me,” he snarls, and for the second time that day, Sephiroth watches Cloud walk away.

This time he follows.

***

Sephiroth finds him on the floor of what used to be his house, sitting with his back against the wall where he’d mentioned the growth chart used to be.  “You never do stay away when I want you to.”

“Then you shouldn’t be surprised,” says Sephiroth.

“I can’t decide if it would be worse if it was here, or not,” says Cloud, reaching out and tracing his fingers over the non-marked surface of the wall. “I don’t know who I hate more. You for burning it down, or Shinra for making it seem like it never happened.”

It doesn’t seem like a question that has an answer, so Sephiroth doesn’t try and give him one. “It’s too cold to sleep without a fire.”

“I’ve slept in colder places.” Cloud has one leg extended, the other knee propped up. “And I don’t think I’ll sleep even if I wanted to. So.”

Sephiroth thinks very carefully about what to say. “I have some experience sitting in the dark and contemplating hate, Cloud. And it never leads anywhere particularly enlightening.”

“That was restrained, for you.” Cloud runs a hand through his spikes. “I never liked this town. Or the people in it. Now it’s gone and they’re all dead.”

“And nothing you can do will bring them back.” Sephiroth moves closer, looking down at Cloud. “I have told you before that I’m never going to let you go, Cloud.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Cloud says, but he doesn’t at him. “I wasn’t leaving forever.”

“I apologized to Zack for hiding myself away in the Shinra basement and losing myself in a thousand scenarios that neither existed nor made rational sense, until somehow I had convinced myself otherwise.”

Cloud does look up at him at that. “I’m not going to go crazy.”

“It’s not as if I knew that would be the outcome,” Sephiroth reminds him.

“I’m not,” Cloud says, between clenched teeth, “Going to go crazy. All right? I’m just…” He looks around. “Thinking.”

“You’re brooding. Believe me, I know what that looks like.”

“Stop acting as if – this is _your_ fault, you know,” Cloud snaps, but it’s remarkably without any heat.

“Yes,” Sephiroth says, evenly. “I know that.”

Cloud leaps gracefully to his feet, his eyes narrowed. “I forgave you. And I meant it. Then why am I angry?”

“Because you forgave me,” says Sephiroth. “And you meant it.”

Cloud gets up close in his space, chin tilted, defiant and proud and deadly. This isn’t his childhood home, and he isn’t a wide-eyed trooper with motion sickness. “I’m not afraid of you. I never have been and I won’t be.”

“Then you can’t be afraid of my shadow, either,” says Sephiroth. He takes Cloud’s chin in his fingers. “This is not your home, Cloud. I burned it to ashes years ago. All this is a remnant of a lie. And you are dangerously close to getting lost in it.”

The mako glow brightens Cloud’s eyes like lightning in a summer storm. Sephiroth half expects him to start lecturing him about his inappropriate commentary, half expects Cloud to try and start a fight – but instead, Cloud grabs him by the hair and pulls him down so they are of a height, so he can stare right into Sephiroth’s eyes.

“Are you sorry because people died, people that I loved – or are you sorry because you lost control and deluded yourself into thinking you were a Cetra reclaiming the planet?”

“You should know me well enough by now to know the answer to that,” Sephiroth says, his words slightly muffled against Cloud’s mouth. They aren’t kissing, but it’s close. “But I will tell you if you want to hear me say it.”

Against his mouth, he can feel Cloud’s breathing – harsh and angry – begin to even out. His hands are fisted in Sephiroth’s coat. “Sometimes I wish I – didn’t feel this way. About you. ” 

“So do I, Cloud,” Sephiroth murmurs. “So do I.”

***

They go back outside, and Sephiroth starts another fire in the circle of stones. In the distance, they can both hear the howls of the Nibel wolves.

Instead of sleeping, they play chess.

For the first time, Cloud wins.

***

The Shina mansion is a mess, thanks to the fight Vincent engaged in with the Deepground soldiers. Sephiroth remembers Rufus telling him that the property was technically his, since it de facto belonged to his mother Lucrecia.

The place was built much better than the hastily re-assembled town, but it’s still mostly destroyed.

“I wonder what would have happened if you’d found Vincent,” Cloud says, making a face and picking up a book – or what was once a book, pages water-soaked and swollen – and trying to decipher what it is from the spine.

“Honestly, in the headspace I was in…probably think he was a vampire and deduce it was my destiny to bring about the rise of the Undead.”

Cloud laughs – really laughs, the sound as bright as the spring sky. It might be the most honest laugh Sephiroth’s ever heard from him, and it’s certainly the loudest. Cloud is a restrained man by nature.

“That’s the funniest thing I think you’ve ever said.” Cloud isn’t smiling but he’s close.

Sephiroth sees the book he’s holding is light blue. He narrows his eyes, remembering his dream about Zack in the Shinra mansion’s library – but he doesn’t ask about the title. Still, something about the memory of the dream makes this easier.

***

They go to the reactor last, about an hour before Cid is supposed to come back and pick them up.

Like most mako reactors, this one is overrun with nature – as if the Planet is trying its hardest to reclaim what humanity so ruthlessly tried to strip away. The doors, once security-coded and locked, are torn off their hinges and there’s evidence of wildlife inside; in fact, the first thing they have to do is dispatch a group of bahba velamyu that had taken up residence a few meters past the entrance.

There’s not much else there, just rusted metal and the lingering smell of mako and a thousand memories Sephiroth is certain they would both rather forget.

There’s a moment when the two of them pause before the chamber marked _Jenova_. Mainly because three screamers and a twin brain attack them, which are easily dispatched – and Sephiroth watches the way Cloud moves, his calm strength and his focus, and thinks it might not have been such an odd thing that Cloud bested him here years ago, when Sephiroth had neither calmness nor focus.

He is more unsettled to be here than he wants to admit. Sephiroth remembers watching the footage from this place, and more than that, he remembers that sick miasma of desperation that had engulfed him – along with the urge to _destroy, burn, revel in the flames of your rage –_

_My son_

_My child_

_Sephiroth_

_Your mother –_

_Calamity_

_Who am I?_

His head snaps back and pain blossoms across his cheek. Blinking in surprise, Sephiroth puts his hand on his face and realizes Cloud has _slapped him_.

“Yeah, no,” says Cloud. “Fuck _that._ ”

Sephiroth runs his fingers over the reddened skin. Suddenly he’s not thinking about the voices that called to him from the darkness, the aching empty place where his humanity once lived, or Hojo’s trigger telling him to do what he did best and _kill – destroy – burn –_

He’s thinking that Cloud just slapped him on the face. Genesis used to like that, Sephiroth remembers that.

 _Why?_ Sephiroth had asked him, once.

_Because it’s personal. No one gets that close to me unless I let them._

He never understood, not really. He was happy to smack Genesis –as most people who knew him would be--but he never understood why anyone would want it.

Now, he thinks maybe he does.

“You want me to do that again?” Cloud asks, eyebrows raised. “You’re – you keep –” Cloud raises his hand and gently traces his fingers over his own cheek.

“Cloud,” Sephiroth says, then glances at the tank. He’s angry, suddenly, in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever been – at himself, at Hojo, at the woman who gave birth to him and the company that stripped his humanity and left an aching, empty hole for him to fill with something dark and bitter and terrible –

_They are not worthy, they are –_

His head snaps back. Cloud might not have been SOLDIER First but he has a SOLDIER First’s strength and, like always, he doesn’t hold back when it comes to Sephiroth.

“You do like that,” Cloud says, hand flexing. “Huh. I knew you liked it a little rough, but not _smack me in the face_ rough.”

Sephiroth feels less like a reincarnated super-SOLDIER, would-be demigod turned amnesiac villain and more like a man having an unexpected conversation about sex with his boyfriend in a dead mako reactor. The absurdity of it makes him laugh, and Cloud’s eyes narrow slightly – likely worrying he’s turning back into the would-be demigod– but Sephiroth just shakes his head and doesn’t explain.

He moves past Cloud and walks up the pathway to the tank. It’s broken into pieces and there’s nothing there, save the nameplate – _Jenova –_ and some rusted cords sliced clean by his masamune, years ago.

_For this, I ruined Cloud Strife’s life. For this, I burned a village. For this, I called down death from the sky. For you. And you gave me nothing but hate, misery and death. You gave me nothing._

“If I hadn’t been consumed by the trigger Hojo implanted in my brain, would I have listened to her?” Sephiroth reaches out as if he’s going to touch a tank that is no longer there. “If Genesis hadn’t thrown my origins in my face, would I have listened to her? If I hadn’t – if I hadn’t lost Genesis and Angeal, _would I have listened to her?_ ”

“Yes,” Cloud says. “Because she knew exactly what you wanted to hear.”

The truth of it snaps through him like the electricity from the control panel Cloud once threw him into, slams into him like the steel floor of the reactor that broke his spine and killed him. To be that weak, he hated it. It made him – it made him --

_Human._

It made him human, despite the enhancements and the foreign cells and the strangeness of his parentage. He was as human as anyone else, and the fact he’d been so desperate to believe he was anything else proved it more than anything.

“Do you feel her?” Sephiroth asks, now. There is a remnant of something ancient and angry in the air; he can feel it like a tickle at the core of his being, like a spiderweb.  

“Yes.” Cloud stands beside him, united in a way they weren’t, last time. “But not like…before.”

“It’s like an echo,” says Sephiroth.

Cloud nods. “Yeah.”

There is nothing in the chamber now but the sounds of their breathing, the echo of a past that couldn’t be changed and the images of a horrific future that never came.

This time, they leave together.

 

 

 


End file.
